


Carpe Oculus

by gallifreyslostson



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, I just want these idiots to use their words to be honest, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of self-harm, and for Peter to fuck off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 11:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20723702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyslostson/pseuds/gallifreyslostson
Summary: Jon tenders his resignation, and Martin makes a choice.





	Carpe Oculus

"Oh jesus, now what have they done," Martin muttered, standing up from his desk chair as he heard a commotion in the hall. He had just made it to the door when it burst open, revealing Melanie wearing a feral expression.

"Martin! You've got to come with me--"

"Hold on, wait," he said, pulling his arm back as she pawed at it. "I think you'll find I _don't _have to come with you, _actually_. Whatever you've all gotten yourselves into--"

"It's _Jon_, Martin," she snapped, with a desperate tinge to her tone that made the hair on the back of Martin's neck stand up. "He's...done something."

Surely he couldn't have gotten into _too_ much trouble _inside_ the Archives, could he? But of course he could, this was _Jon_ they were talking about, he had the self-preservation instincts of an intoxicated mayfly at dusk. If there was even a fraction of a chance that he could get kidnapped, beaten up, or gnawed on by some eldritch nightmare from the great beyond or something, Jon would find a way to make it happen.

Martin glance back at his desk, shifting his weight uncertainly as the pull of Peter and The Lonely warred with the lingering attraction to Jon's...well.

"_Martin!"_

"Right," he said, turning his back to the desk and following Melanie out into the hall. "What's happened?"

"It's...hard to explain," Melanie said, leading him out and down towards the main doors where, to his horror, he saw an ambulance stopped. "It's all gone a bit...Oedipal."

"What?" he asked sharply, this remark strange enough to completely derail his suddenly mounting panic. "What's Jon's mother got to do with anything?"

"Not that part," she said darkly, looking past him.

He turned to see a couple of EMTs hurtling toward them with a stretcher bearing a body, trailed by Basira and Daisy who--

_Christ_, that looked like a lot of blood.

"Jon! Jon, what--"

"Excuse us!" One of the EMTs barked. "We have to get this man to hospital before he bleeds out!"

"Jesus what--"

"Ask his friends!" her partner snapped, jerking his head back toward Basira and Daisy before disappearing outside. Martin hurried after them, watching ineffectually as the man he'd been working so hard to keep safe was loaded up and driven away, the wailing sirens echoing in his wake.

Martin stared off in the direction they'd gone, jaw clenched tight, for a long moment before rounding on his coworkers.

"What the _hell _happened?" he demanded. They looked shaken, traumatized, but he was past caring. It wasn't as if that was anything new anyway. "What's happened to Jon?"

"His eyes," Daisy said, her voice hollow. "He...he gouged out his _eyes_."

Martin stared at her, horrified. "Why would he...oh god."

He wanted to ask what made Jon do it, what weird entity had taken hold of him and turned him against himself, but...but that wasn't it, was it? No, of course not. No, this...had been all Jon. For the first time in...who knew how long, this decision he'd made himself.

It made a sick sort of sense, didn't it? If _he_ couldn't use his eyes...then neither could the Beholding. It'd have no use for him as it's avatar.

"Do you think it really worked?" Melanie asked. "Like...do you think that he's...still human enough to damage himself like that? Or will The Beholding just...heal him?"

"No idea," Basira said, shaking her head. "He was holding this. Figured it was better in our hands than down at A&E."

She handed him a tape recorder. He almost wanted to laugh. Or possibly vomit. Maybe cry.

"Have you listened to it?" he asked instead, running his thumb over the buttons.

"God no," Basira spat. "Far as I'm concerned, he's either a monster that's currently useful, or coward that's left us to mop up the mess. I don't really want to hear from either."

"The man nearly just bled to death in his office," Martin snapped.

"Then _you _go hold his hand," she said, turning back toward the building. "I'm going to go home and shower."

Melanie didn't even say that much, just...left.

"He might be alright," Daisy offered halfheartedly, hugging herself against a non existent chill as Martin turned the tape recorder over in his hands thoughtfully. "Never know."

"Yeah."

"If it worked, could be the best thing for him."

"What do you think it means if it _didn’t _work?" he asked, not really expecting an answer. "Is that him living as a monster, or him dying as a human?"

There was a long pause, then Daisy reached out and squeezed his arm. "Take care, Martin."

Then she was gone too. And Martin was alone on the steps of the institute, his only company a few drying droplets of blood...and a tape recorder.

***

Hours went by. The doctors hadn't been able to figure out exactly why Jon's heart stopped during surgery. They had since evidently decided on something about blood loss and shock. Martin knew better. The truth of the matter was, he didn't really know if Jon's body was still enough to sustain him on its own without The Beholding circumventing the natural order of things for their own means.

As it turned out, the answer was a resounding _maybe_. He was on a ventilator at the moment, but responding to stimuli, so something of him was still in there. You could almost believe he was just sleeping in the hospital bed. If you ignored the tubes. And the gauze.

Martin sank into a chair beside Jon's bed with a groan. He ran a hand over his face and watched the still form for a moment before hesitantly taking Jon’s hand in his own. There were still faint scars there above the web of veins, scars Martin could see here and there as his eyes travelled up Jon’s arm, making the flesh look...strange and mottled. He’d heard the doctors mutter about psychiatric care, theorizing about drugs or self harm. He couldn’t blame them. Jon looked like shit, if he was perfectly honest.

But he was still _Jon_. Maybe more so now than he had been in years.

Martin ran his thumb over the back of Jon’s hand, sighing.

“You know how on television and in films, there’s those moments when the hero is unconscious and their tearful loved ones stand around the bed begging them to keep fighting?” He paused, watching what he could see of Jon’s face, then shrugged. “I always thought it was a bit daft. The idea that telling someone who probably can’t even hear you, or can’t process what they’re hearing if they can, like when your alarm goes off and you sleep through it because your dream turns it into a...fire alarm or something, something totally disconnected from whatever’s really happening--the idea that _that _will somehow _bolster _someone into _willing _their body to heal. I know people say all sorts of things about the power of positive thinking and that’s all well and good, I suppose, but it’s always seemed like madness to put the burden of health and continued happiness on an unconscious mind that didn’t actually have any direct control over its body’s healing. Talk about unfair expectations.”

He paused to brood as his thumb traced one of the veins on the back of Jon’s hand.

“And I say all that, Jon, just so that it’s clear that I’m going into this with eyes wide open, knowing fully both how completely unfair it is to you and how unlikely it is to actually help. But.”

He looked up again, letting out a slow breath as he leaned forward.

“But I need you to stay with me, Jon. I need _you _to fight. This can’t be the end. Not after...not after everything. It can’t end like this. _You _can’t end like this. Please just...stay with me, Jon. Please.”

He bowed his head, letting out another slow breath.

“Touching.”

Martin let out a short, bitter chuckle before raising his head to eye the newcomer. “What are _you _doing here?”

“One of my employees was taken to hospital after an accident on the job,” Peter said, shrugging one shoulder as he leaned the other against the wall, hands in his pockets. “It felt only right to come see that he was alright.”

“Is that _really _the only reason you came?” Martin asked suspiciously.

Peter eyed him a moment, then shook his head slowly, sounding genuinely disappointed as he said, “Oh Martin. I had such high hopes for you, you know.”

“Yes, well, pardon me if I don't wallow in the guilt of _that_ particular failure,” Martin said waspishly.

He’d had moments of fear, of frustration, of anger, just an entire spectrum of emotion in his time at the Magnus Institute, but right here, right now, none of it could compare to just how bloody sick to death he was with these...beings throwing their weight around, using people and tossing them aside. This wasn’t just _instilling fear_, even though that was supposed to be their entire purpose. They’d gone and turned the whole business into just...weird, cosmic bullying that _broke _people or...made them break themselves.

Peter narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, almost as if he could sense just how precariously Martin was teetering on the edge of a complete meltdown. Which, admittedly, he probably could. Eternal being and all.

“Yes,” he said slowly, drawing out the word. “I suppose there was nothing for it. He always was your priority.” He paused again, his eyes moving to Jon, and the tubes, and the gauze, and then his gaze snapped back to Martin sharply, like a typewriter return. “You know this doesn't actually _mean_ anything, right? Oh, he...might survive, might even get out of the reach of the Beholding, but it doesn’t really change _your _position at all.”

“This? No,” Martin said, then reached for the tape recorder still lying on the bedside table without letting go of Jon’s hand. “But this might.”

Peter caught the tape recorder easily when Martin tossed it, but then made a face as if it was something distasteful he’d been forced to handle. Martin may as well have handed the man a live squid. With some reluctance, he pressed play, and Martin’s eyes went back to Jon’s face as the unconscious man’s voice filled the room.

_“Okay. Alright. I...fuck. Okay. I don't know if this'll work. I don't know if...I dunno, if this tape'll just erase itself or something. Something tells me the Beholding won't want **this **to be heard. But I do. I'm done. I'm through being used, I'm through watching everything I love or...or could have loved destroyed by the Powers that be. If I'm to do what's right, if I'm to make a difference, I want it to be my choice, by my hand, and not just as some...unwitting pawn too afraid of dying to make any **real **sacrifice. So...this is it. If I die...well. Some things are worse than death. We've all seen that. But nonetheless I'm sorry. I'm sorry to all my friends. My compatriots. My...victims. Basira. Melanie. Daisy. God, Tim and Sasha. Martin.”_

There was a pause then, and Martin swallowed hard, his eyes stinging as he squeezed Jon’s limp hand.

_“Martin, if you hear this, then...then let **this** be your reminder than you choose your path in life. Not them. Not me. But. But if I survive this. If I'm still...here to make a choice, after everything. If you are. Then I need you to know that...that between you and the Beholding, or the Lonely, or whatever other fears exist or come to be, I..I'll choose you. Every time. And...and I know you...you have your own plans, your own...place in someone’s machinations but...” _There was a sigh on the recorder._ “If I’m more than the Archivist, more than the avatar of the Beholding, then so are you, because if there’s anything left of me to survive after this, it’s **because** of you. Because you saw me. And it might be my fault--probably is my fault, most things are--but...but you don’t have to be lonely, Martin. And you don’t have to be **his**_**.**_”_

Martin’s eyes slid closed as the voice on the tape cleared its throat.

_“That got away from me a bit. I’m--Martin you know what I’m saying. Or...trying to say, anyway. Which means now I’m just stalling. Nothing for it, I suppose. This is Jonathon Sims, Archivist, tendering my final resignation. Carpe diem or...whatever.”_

There was a second of dead silence as the recording was stopped, then started again with a thunderous crash and the sound of a man screaming, followed by a lot of movement and voices and a door slamming open.

Basira’s voice was the first to be clearly made out, screaming “_JON! JON WHAT HAVE YOU **DONE**?”_

_“JESUS, THE **BLOOD**\--” _Daisy, sounding a bit like she was going to be sick, which was a _bit _weird considering her whole...thing.

_“M-Martin--” _Jon’s voice, between screams, sounding choked and strained. “_Get--_”

“**_Martin _**_did this to you?”_

“_No, I_\--” His words gave way to another scream, and Martin winced. “_T-tell. Martin. I--_”

He stopped short. Martin guessed this was when he passed out. There was another few seconds of Melanie showing up and being ordered to dial 999 and find Martin, and then the recording stopped.

There was silence in the room, broken only by the steady beeping of Jon’s heart rate monitor and the rhythmic _woosh _of the ventilator.

“Well,” Peter said after a long moment. “I suppose that settles it doesn't it.”

“Yeah,” replied Martin. “Suppose it does. I can't really be _The Lonely_ if _I'm_ someone's choice, can I?”

Peter nodded, sauntering across the room to set the tape recorder down on again on the bedside table. His hands went into his pockets again as he gazed at Jon.

“No hope at all for the eyes, then?” he asked.

“Certainly doesn’t look like it,” Martin told him. “Whatever else Jon might be, he’s very, very good at causing himself harm.”

“Do you really think it’ll be easy, Martin?” Peter asked in a conversational tone. “Running away together? Do you really think, after all this, that you can just get away from all of it, find your happy ending?”

“God no,” Martin scoffed, and Peter raised an eyebrow. “Well, plenty of people manage to fall prey to one or more of your lot with or without help from the Institute painting a target on their backs. No, I expect we’ll be haunted by plenty til one of you destroys the others, or destroys the world, in which case we’ll be dead and it won’t matter either way. So no, maybe it won’t be a happy ending. But it _will_ be _ours_. And we’ll be fine.”

“That _is _disappointing,” Peter said, and then he was gone. Martin wasn’t...entirely sure if he _left_, or just...vanished. Peter...had that effect. But that wasn’t Martin’s problem anymore. He’d made his choice.

_I'll choose you. Every time._

“Yeah,” he said quietly, squeezing Jon’s hand. “We’ll be fine.”

And he could swear that, ever so slightly...Jon’s hand squeezed back.


End file.
